I hurt the man I wanted to replace you with? Vito would really love to know that!
By the time Santo came back, carefully carrying the glass of water in front of him, her tears had been reduced to the occasional sniffle. Smiling him a watery smile, she accepted his offering and added a nasal-sounding thank you that didn’t alter his solemn stare.’
I don’t like to see you upset, Mummy,’ he confessed.
‘I’m sorry, darling,’ she apologised gently, and pressed a reassuring kiss to his cheek. ‘I promise I won’t do it again.’
And to think, she slayed herself guiltily, only this morning she had been shouting at him, and here he was being so excruciatingly nice to her! It was enough to make her want to start crying all over again.
Maybe Vito saw it coming, because as quick as a flash he was ushering Santo out of the room with murmured phrases about Catherine needing to rest now.
Oddly enough she did rest. Lying there, huddled beneath the duvet, she started out by thinking about Marcus and Santo and herself and ended up falling asleep, to dream about Vito coming back into the bedroom, she didn’t how much later, and silently but gently undressing her before slipping the duvet back over her boneless figure. She could remember dreaming that she had a one-sided conversation with him, but before she could remember what that conversation was about sleep claimed her yet again.
The next time she awoke she knew it was the middle of the night simply by the hushed silence beyond the closed curtains. She lay there for a while, feeling relaxed and comfortable—until something moved in the bed beside her that had her shimmying over on a gasp of alarm.
She found Vito asleep in the bed beside her. Lying flat on his back, with an arm thrown in relaxed abandon on the pillow behind his head, he looked as if he had been there for hours!
But that wasn’t all—not by a long shot. Because from what she could see of his bronze muscled torso, he had also climbed into her bed naked!
CHAPTER FIVE
‘VITO!’ she cried in whispering protest, and issued an angry push to his warm satin shoulder.
‘Hmm?’ he mumbled, black-lashed eyelids flickering upwards to reveal slumberous eyes that were not quite in focus.
‘What do you think you are doing here?’ Catherine demanded.
‘Sleeping,’ he murmured, and lowered his eyelids again. ‘I suggest that you do the same thing.’
‘But I don’t want you in my bed!’
‘Tough,’ he replied. ‘Because I am staying. You could not be left alone here in the state you were in, and Santo needed the reassurance of my presence. So be wise, cara,’ he advised. ‘Accept a situation you brought upon yourself. Shut up and go to sleep before I awaken properly and begin thinking of other things we can do to use up what is left of the night.’
‘Well, of all the—’ She couldn’t believe she was hearing this. ‘What makes you think that all of that gives you the right to climb into bed with me?’
‘Arrogance,’ he replied, so blandly that Catherine almost choked on the sudden urge to laugh!
Only this was no laughing matter. ‘Just get out of here,’ she hissed, giving his rock-solid shoulder yet another prompting push.
‘If I open my eyes, Catherine, you will intensely regret it,’ he warned very grimly.
She was no fool; she recognised that tone. On an angry flurry of naked flesh, she flung herself onto her back, to lie seething in silence.
Naked. Her heart stopped beating as a new kind of shock went rampaging through her.
So it had not been a dream and Vito had undressed her! The man’s self-confessed arrogance knew no bounds! she decided as she sent one of her hands on a quick foray of her own body to discover just how naked she was.
She was very—very naked.
‘Did you know you have developed a habit of talking in your sleep?’ he said suddenly.
Catherine froze beside him. She heard a very muddled and very disjointed echo of words being spoken by her that should have taken place in the privacy of her head.
Regretful words about Marcus.
‘Shut up,’ she gasped, terrified of what was coming. ‘He must be quite something, this man you weep for.’ He ignored her advice in the dulcet tones of one readying for battle. ‘To reach the frozen wastelands where your heart lies hidden. Maybe I should take the trouble to meet him, see what he’s got that I never had.’
‘Why bother?’ she slashed back. ‘When you would never find the same qualities inside yourself if you searched for ever.’
‘Is he good in bed?’
Her next gasp almost strangled her. ‘Go to hell,’ she replied, turning her back towards him.
As an act of dismissal it had entirely the opposite effect, because Vito’s arm had scooped around her and rolled her back before she even knew what was happening.
And suddenly he was leaning right over her, all glinting eyes and primitive male aggression. ‘I asked you a question,’ he prompted darkly.
Her mouth ran dry, the tip of her tongue slinking out to moisten parted lips that were remaining stubbornly silent because she was damned if she was going to tell the truth—that she had never even been tempted to go to bed with Marcus—just to soothe Vito’s ruffled ego! Luxurious dark eyelashes curled down over shimmering eyes as he lowered his gaze to observe the nervous action—and completely froze it as an old, old sensation went snaking through her.
He was going to kiss her. ‘No, Vito,’ she breathed, but even she heard the weakness in that pathetic little protest.
It was already too late. His mouth claimed hers with the kind of deeply sensual kiss that could only be issued by this wretched man. It was like drowning in the most exquisite substance ever created, she likened dazedly as she began to sink on a long, spiralling dive through silken liquid kept exactly at body heat so it was impossible to tell what part of the kiss was hers and what part was his.
The man, his closeness, even the antipathy that was pulsing between them, was so sexual that she found herself thinking fancifully of lions again. Her skin came alive, each tiny pore beginning to vibrate with an awareness that held her trapped by its power and its intensity.
Whether it was she who began to touch him first or whether Vito was the one to begin their gentle caresses, she didn’t know—didn’t really care. Because the heat of his flesh felt so exquisitely wonderful to her starved fingertips, and where he touched she burned, and where he didn’t she ached.
She tried to drag some air into lungs that had ceased working, felt the tips of her breasts briefly touch his hair-roughened breastplate, felt her nipples sting as they responded to the contact and moaned luxuriously against his mouth.
With a sensual flick of his tongue, Vito caught that little moan, took possession of it as if it belonged to him. And as his hands worked their old magic on her flesh with the sensual expertise of a master,
